


Picture Her

by eponine119



Category: Lost
Genre: 1970s, F/M, Insomnia, past Sawyer/Kate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:55:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26793244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eponine119/pseuds/eponine119
Summary: Sawyer can't sleep, lying next to Juliet
Relationships: Juliet Burke/James "Sawyer" Ford
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	Picture Her

But when I try to picture her, you're the one I see  
– Be My Downfall, Del Amitri

Picture Her  
by eponine119  
August 4, 2020

Sawyer can't sleep after they have sex. He lies awake, listening to Juliet sleep. He closes his eyes, and tries, but it just never happens. His head is full and his thoughts are racing and all the stories he tells himself to fall asleep are just gone, leaving him with nothing. 

The second time, when he's so tired it hurts, he splays his fingers across her back and murmurs in her ear, “I'm gonna go.” She mutters her assent without opening her eyes. Her tousled hair is silver in the moonlight and he lets his hand rest on her skin for another moment, feeling like he should say something else. Something more. 

In his own bed, he sleeps. 

So they do it in Juliet's bed, almost every night, and once she falls asleep in his arms, he eases away and goes back home. Somehow it feels more honest this way, because in his own bed he thinks about Kate. He can't do that lying next to Juliet. That's why he can't sleep. 

He remembers his tent on the beach. Waking up to Kate putting on her socks in the night, slipping away. Making some excuse he thought was weak at the time. Maybe now he understands it. Maybe he never wanted to understand, because who was Kate thinking about in the middle of the night, that she couldn't think about lying next to him? 

Juliet has no such trouble, and he envies her this. Maybe there's not enough on her conscience, he thinks, but that doesn't seem right. It seems like it only takes a moment for her to turn over, close her eyes and sink deep. 

So he lies alone in his own bed and thinks about her. Remembers things that happened. Conversations that they had. He turns the pillow over to the cool side and thinks about her coming back here. How if he was a better man, he'd be like Jin and wouldn't want her to return to this godforsaken island. 

Except the island doesn't seem so bad now. They have a home here, jobs, all the creature comforts. He does, he means. He has a home here. 

He runs through endless conversations they might have someday. Permutations of the same conversation, until it feels so real it's like it happened, and he falls asleep wishing it would carry over into his dreams. 

It never does. 

Mostly he dreams of horrors. Of falling, of jumping, of water and drowning and dying of thirst and fever in the jungle. He wakes with a start, wondering how many nights in a soft bed it'll take him to start to forget. Probably more nights than there are left in his life, considering he's spent the last thirty years dreaming of one night, of one heartbeat, one instant of horror in his childhood. 

Juliet never says anything about his leaving. In the daylight, or by lamplight when they come together, she never says, “I wish you'd stay.” She never asks him why. He lies awake, wishing maybe she would. 

He starts to dream about her. He leaves her, and thinks about Kate, and then closes his eyes and Juliet is with him. Sometimes they're back on Alcatraz. Sometimes they're in the jungle running for their lives, and he's holding her hand or she's holding his, and he doesn't mind it quite so much, the danger. He dreams about standing in the kitchen, having a conversation about Jello molds and paint colors. He dreams about holding her in his arms and telling her things he's never told anybody. He wakes in a panic from that dream, his heart racing and his eyes open wide. 

He tries to go back to sleep but he can only think about telling her in real life. For the first time, he falls asleep thinking about Juliet. 

The next night he lingers while she sleeps. He's wide awake, as usual. His mind replays bits of their lovemaking and other parts of his day. He thinks about staying, but ultimately, knowing he'll be awake all night and exhausted in the morning drives him to slip away. 

“Maybe we should go to your place,” Juliet suggests. He kisses her until he thinks she's forgotten, and then later thinks about it until the sun comes up and he goes home for those final few hours of the night. 

Another night, she muses, “You could try melatonin. Or lavender. Chamomile tea?” 

“I don't have insomnia,” he growls. 

“Could have fooled me,” she says, in that half-snarky way she gets. 

Later, he thinks about telling her the truth. But when she sleeps she looks so innocent and helpless (though he knows she is neither) and he can't bear the thought of hurting her. And it would hurt her, he realizes. 

Just like waking up alone in the morning is hurting her, even though he's never there to see it in her eyes. He thinks for a long moment about breaking it off with her, to try to save her that hurt, but he's in too deep and he needs her too much. 

He tries like hell to stay. To fall asleep so he can stay. He counts backward; he counts his breaths. But he can't. He's so exhausted he could cry, and he doesn't want her to see his failure, so he slinks home.

The next night, he leaves almost immediately so he can get some damn sleep. When he sees her in the morning, she has pale purple rings under her eyes. Maybe he was wrong about how easy it is for her, he thinks, and suddenly he's flooded with doubts. Does she wake up the moment he leaves? What does she think about if she lies awake? 

She's going to break up with him. It lies like an anvil on his chest, and it seems unavoidable. He doesn't know what to do. 

“Maybe we should talk about it,” she suggests, but he doesn't know what in the world he would say. 

“Maybe whiskey,” he says. 

“Or Nyquil,” she suggests, and they both laugh, and he thinks it's going to be okay. 

But the next night she says, “Maybe a break.” 

He rolls onto his side to face her. To see if she's serious, although he knows that she is. She closes her eyes, like facing him is too much for her in that moment. He strokes her cheek and says, “Tell me.” 

“I thought it'd be enough, but it's not,” she says, and there's a hint of tears in her voice that makes him want to scoop her into his arms and hold her so tight neither one of them can breathe. “I think I want more from you than you can give me.” 

Is it more? he thinks, but it must be. 

He thinks he should give her what she wants, and if she wants this... to not be together anymore... that's at least something he can manage. Except damn it, he doesn't want to. So he cuddles her against him, and that night neither of them sleep. 

The night after that, he's home, alone. Stunningly, silently alone. His body aches for her, but it's not just that. He misses her. The silly little things they'd talk about, her laugh and her smile. He drinks some whiskey and tells himself he's practicing for when she takes him back, but it requires a lot to take his edges off, and he has to be sober in the morning. 

She smiles at him when he sees her around. It hurts. 

He goes to her house one night. He's afraid of what he might find and what she might say, so he clutches flowers in his hand. She takes one look at the flowers and kisses him. They sleep together, just like before, and he still can't sleep. I'm screwed, he thinks as he lays there until morning, I am so damn screwed. 

“Maybe you should talk to someone,” she says. 

“Uh-uh,” he protests vehemently, which gets him a long, silent look. 

“Maybe we should leave,” she suggests wildly. “Take the sub to Tahiti and get a hotel room.” 

“No,” he says. 

“You don't want to leave,” she says, and there's an undercurrent of surprise. “Why --” She stops, and he feels like his hearts stops too. “You think she'll come back. And you won't be here.” 

“No,” he protests, in the face of her devastation. 

“You still think she's coming back.” Her pale skin is like porcelain, and the smile is where it's cracked. 

She doesn't yell, and she doesn't cry, and he's too afraid to go to her house the next night. He's so scared that it's really over that he can't even sleep in his own bed. In the morning, she sees him looking haggard and it's like he's passed a test. Or she's decided she doesn't care anymore, or maybe he's just that good or he's the only single guy in the Dharma Initiative, but she takes him back. 

She doesn't fall asleep the way she used to. They both lie awake for awhile, not talking, then he wraps himself around her and closes his eyes. 

When he opens them it's morning. 

“How'd you sleep?” she asks, and it's with a hopeful smile. He smiles back at her, wondering if he's ever really felt content before this moment. 

That night, she falls asleep easily in his arms. He tests himself. He thinks about Kate. The last time he saw her. But halfway through, he always gets distracted by thinking about Juliet. He orders himself to imagine Kate in his mind, but it's Juliet that appears. 

He wonders how long it's been. Because this didn't just happen last night. She's been eroding from his mind for a while. The spaces she filled giving way. She hasn't been replaced, exactly, and if he probes at it, he still misses her. But he realizes he's been with Juliet for as long as he ever knew Kate from beginning to end. 

Kate isn't coming back, and maybe he doesn't need her anymore. Maybe he just needed someone to hold onto. 

There are a lot more days to come. All of them will be in the 1970s, here, with Juliet. 

And he can sleep. 

(end)


End file.
